Un-writing the Canon: Feminist Erasures and Revisions in Historical Fiction

Abstract

Traditional literary canons have long been shaped by patriarchal norms, privileging dominant narratives and often marginalizing female voices and perspectives. Especially in historical fiction, these dynamics are particularly entrenched for the genre usually mobilizes hegemonic ways of reading history over all else. This critical gap is addressed in "Un-writing the Canon: Feminist Erasures and Revisions in Historical Fiction," where the authors analyze how feminist authors have rewritten and broken the canon of historical narratives. The study focuses on the deliberate feminist ‘un-writing’ in erasing and rewriting of traditional representations, in order to create historically engaged imagined ‘women’ in the rendering of historical fiction from a gender aware perspective. It attempts to discover recurring ways of disrupting canonical authority in order to suffuse the silenced or oppressed with voice, in particular women and other historically oppressed groups. This is a qualitative, interpretive study in which the methodology is literary analysis combined with feminist theory. Thus, the research examines a set of a curated sample of feminist historical novels from varied cultural settings. The analysis takes place through textual examination of narrative structure, character agency, intertextuality, historiographical intervention and blur. At the same time, this study places these works within broader wider socio-political and literary discourses on identifying and resituating of the canon and of feminist criticism. The analysis demonstrates that feminist historical fiction often relies on decentering of minor, excluded character, reentering of foundational historical events from secondary perspective of character, and destabilizing of authority of the narrative. On the one hand, these practices are a critical examination of literary canon, which is both an inheritance and a revised practice; and on the other hand, these are simultaneously practices of historical revision. Feminist historical fiction challenges established ways of telling and constructing canons, making a place for more diverse types of representation. What the study signifies about such narratives in improving cultural memory and academic discourse is underlined. It adds to ongoing discussion about what makes a woman or a male gendered author of literature.